FILE PHOTO: Passengers wait outside a checkpoint inside Terminal A at John Wayne airport after an announcement was made for to cease all screening and boarding.

-LAKE FOREST, Reed Royalty, President, OCTax: Orange County is deliberating between two food service vendors at its growing John Wayne Airport for the next 10 years: the incumbent, HMSHost versus a challenger, Delaware North. (Disclosure: HMSHost is a member of OCTax.) A committee evaluated the competing proposals on five criteria, each weighted at 20 percent: experience and qualifications, financial viability and background, proposed rent payments, store concepts and improvement plans. The staff evaluation committee rated the two vendors within 3 percent of each other.

That tiny margin of 3 percent masks the most relevant fact: HMSHost offers the airport higher guaranteed revenue during the 10-year life of the contract. The Orange County Taxpayers Association (OCTax) assumes, and hopes, that was the basis for the Orange County Airport Commission’s wise and unanimous recommendation to our Board of Supervisors to award the contract to HMSHost.

Money issues will be paramount in Orange County’s economy for the foreseeable future. Orange County is still paying off its debt from its 1994 bankruptcy, and we’re trying to climb out of recession. These restaurants would solidify the Orange County “brand” at the airport and contribute more directly to the county’s economy and workforce.

This food fight is scheduled to conclude at the Board of Supervisors meeting Jan. 11. OCTax urges our supervisors to choose HMSHost because of its experience and good record as the incumbent vendor, its strong lineup of Orange County restaurants, its selection by the Airport Commission, its superior Orange County branding and – above all – its additional monetary benefit to the airport and the county economy.

False sense of U.S. security

-RANCHO SANTA MARGARITA, Thomas A. Coss: In a speech to Orange County business leaders this past fall, Richard Davis, CEO of U.S. Bank, spoke of the economic climate as one of “unfamiliar uncertainty,” a phrase he credits first hearing from Ben Bernanke, chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve. This seems highly descriptive of the situation in which we find ourselves. We Americans are great in dealing with uncertainty, so there is nothing new there, yet this uncertainty seems different, certainly unfamiliar to many.

Today’s uncertainties are unfamiliar because they are ideologically driven and imposed; artificial and man-made. We are unfamiliar with a government with an “if all else fails, force it” approach to governing that is leading us into perilous territory.

This government has shown no humility regarding the limits of its own knowledge and understanding of consequences.

We’re unfamiliar with hubris so profound that discussion, reflection, negotiation and compromise are out of the question – deemed foolish. Anyone who has ever been a teenager, or knows one, is familiar with what I mean. We are seeing a government with an adolescent false sense of certainty fueled by a naive optimism regarding its intellect, capabilities and foresight; and as is always the case, it is dangerous.

Humility in the limitations of what we know is critical to America’s success. In this year ahead, we look forward to results and if they don’t show up, we’ll change our mind again.

The Brits do health care right

-CORONA DEL MAR, Martin A. Brower: As a longtime Register subscriber, I was shocked to see my wife’s cousin, a doctor from England and his wife when they visited us recently. Even though they suffer with England’s health care system, they were alive and appeared to be extremely healthy.

“You can’t be alive and well,” I told him. “The editorial pages of The Register and the letters from readers have told me for months how bad the British national health system is.”

The doctor and his wife smiled broadly as they told me how everyone in England laughs loudly when they hear about the battle over health care in the United States. “Your politicians telling the people how bad a national health care program is has been the joke of the year for us,” the doctor said. He assured me that he owns his own office, which he is expanding, hires his own staff and gets paid well by the government for each patient he sees – and that he has no problem referring to specialists.

Obviously, he doesn’t read The Register’s editorial pages and letters from the readers.

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